Should you choose Cloud DevOps Engineer Or Solution Architect as a career?
Are you wondering if you should choose DevOps as your career path or Solution Architect?
When starting or switching to a career in the cloud as a fresher, people usually come across many career paths to create or advance their careers. Two of the most popular yet rewarding are DevOps engineering and Solution Architect. Though both roles are part of every cloud-based organisation, they are entirely different regarding their day-to-day responsibilities.
In this post, we will look at how these fields are different, what roles and responsibilities they come with and analyze what would be best for you.
All About DevOps and DevSecOps Engineers.
DevOps Or DevSecOps comprises words – Development, Security and Operations. (Note: With the rise of cloud computing, security has also been added as a prerequisite to the role of DevOps. We will get to it soon.)
As the name suggests, a DevOps Engineer’s first order of business is combining, communicating and organising Development and Operations based on the Cloud Infrastructure of any organisation.
To understand the role of DevOps better, let’s ask ourselves a few questions.
Why do we need DevOps Engineers?
Traditionally, large IT organisations have a Development Team responsible for developing and updating any Application. Then they have an Operations Team, which maintains the Application’s stability on the Cloud or on-premise servers.
Developers are responsible for pushing new updates for the Application. At the same time, the Operation team ensures that the Application is running smoothly by ensuring the Infrastructure that holds the Application is functioning and configured correctly.
The developers have little to no knowledge about the configurations of the IT infrastructure in Large Organisations. [Any popular App needs thousands of resources to run smoothly, and every developer can’t catch up with all the configuration and changes made in the resources daily as they have their responsibilities].
If the developers wish to roll out updates continuously, which is the demand of modern-day technology, the Operation team would have to keep the Infrastructure updated per the new requirements of the updated application. Apart from this, the developers also need to be made aware of the cloud infrastructure that runs the application so that they can make the application better.
To ensure that developers and operations can work together effectively to roll out continuous updates and keep the Cloud Infrastructure stable, the role of DevOps Engineer came into Picture.
Roles and Responsibility of DevOps Engineer.
As we discussed above, a DevOps engineer works as a medium between the Development Team and the Operations Team to ensure continuous updates can be rolled out for the application without compromising the stability of the IT or Cloud infrastructure. This is known as CI/CD or continuous integration and continuous delivery/continuous deployment.
DevOps engineers use various tools to automate the process and implement policies to accomplish their tasks.
What do you need to learn to start your Career in DevOps successfully?
No matter which public or private cloud you choose to work on, as a DevOps engineer, you come across various tools utilised across all the major cloud platforms. These include Git, Slack, Docker, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Jenkins and much more. There are many certifications available that can help you start your career in the field of Devops. Every major public cloud platform have their dedicated certifications. AWS DevOps, MS Azure Az-400, GCP-Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer
To properly be able to utilise these tools, you should have some basic understanding of scripting, bashing, system administration and networking.
Now the Important question is, How much will you make as a DevOps Engineer?
In the US, Europe and other western countries, an Avg DevOps Engineer with 3 Years of experience can expect around $90,000 to $ 130,000.
While In India, Bangladesh and newly industrialised countries, the average salary of a DevOps engineer after 3 Years of experience can vary from INR 9,00,000 to 15,00,000 in most organisations.
All About Solution Architects.
To Simply put, a Solution Architect is someone who plans and overlooks the implementation and functioning of the Entire Cloud or IT Infrastructure of an Organisation. They provide the vision of future technology infrastructure upgrades and solve business problems.
It is their responsibility to manage the IT Blueprint of the organisation and define every policy that should be considered to implement the IT infrastructure architecture.
Usually, Solution Architects are people with at least 5 Years of experience working in various positions like Administration, Monitoring and IT. Solution Architects can be considered the head of It infrastructure, so they must have a long experience working with many different technologies.
Responsibilities and tasks of a Solution Architect.
Your day-to-day tasks as a solutions architect may include the following, depending on the company you work for and the project you’re working on:
- Making recommendations and creating road maps for proposed solutions
- Solution design, debugging, and performance analysis
- Documenting and disseminating best practices for new solutions
- Advocating for process improvements and assisting in the development of solutions
- Communicating new features and benefits to partners, customers, and other stakeholders regularly
- Providing technical leadership to a team throughout the lifecycle of a project
- Creating proof-of-concept projects to test your proposed solutions
- reviewing and validating other team members’ solution designs
How Much will you Earn as an Solution Architect?
The Abg Salary of a Solution Architect can range between $130,000 – $ 250,000 in Western countries and INR 18,00,000 – INR 28,00,000 in a mid-size Indian Company.
What is the difference between a DevOps Engineer and Solutions Architect, and what should You Choose?
By now, you will completely understand the roles, responsibilities and requirements for DevOps and Solution Architects.
There is no definitive answer to it as both careers are rewarding, and the pay at a senior level is almost comparable. Although the Avg Salary of a Solution Architect is comparatively more than a DevOps engineer, it usually takes a person 5-10 years at minimum to get to the position of a solution architect. During these years of work in the cloud, people usually have to work longer hours and constantly keep changing their field of work.
If you find both of these roles interesting, then you can consider the following recommendations from my side to choose your field.
- Are you young and just starting? If you are a fresh graduate and just starting out your IT career, then you can consider going the long route to becoming a solution architect by working with a range of different technologies.
- Do you already have a lot of experience in Cloud or server management? If so, you can take a solution architect certification and try to find a job.
- Are you good at scripting and bashing and want to be the master of your field fast? If this is you, then you should consider DevOps.
- Do you like to balance working in tech and working with people? Then DevOps could be a better choice for you,
In the end, both DevOps and Solution Architects are rewarding and challenging career paths to follow. Cloud is evolving fast, so there is nothing permanent here. People always have to keep themselves updated, and with the rise in the number of services available in popular public cloud platforms, more new roles are being added. Let me know in the comments below what you think is the future of cloud computing.